May 2, 2005

The SAVO Group announces the availability of its new Relationship Review offering, which provides organizations with an unprecedented solution to establish, standardize and automate production of customized, data-driven customer presentations for B2B account retention and growth.

Progressive enterprises such as AmerisourceBergen Corporation and Diners Club have worked with SAVO on relationship review program development and automated production using SAM.

A relationship review is a tool used by strategic account managers in periodic meetings with existing customers to discuss qualitative and quantitative accomplishments, milestones and future goals of the organizational partnership. When delivered effectively, relationship review presentations can accomplish objectives to entrench and grow relationships by reaching a more senior decision-making audience; demonstrating deep client insight; and uncovering cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

"We're seeing an increased focus on the lifetime value of a customer beyond the initial sale," said John Aiello, SAVO co-founder and managing director. "Organizations managing large portfolios of commercial customers understand the potential returns from institutionalizing relationship review programs.

However, without an automation solution like SAM, production of these presentations for every strategic account is a costly, resource- intensive task. For example, consider the productivity gains when a relationship manager is no longer spending time writing slides and finding, verifying and typing data into charts and graphs--for every account he or she manages--and instead is collaborating face-to-face with customers."

Through the SAM platform (which encompasses a broad range of sales assets beyond presentations), marketing can publish a relationship review presentation template reflecting accurate, compliant, properly-branded content, and establish parameters for controlled customization.

In a matter of minutes, account managers can have a meaningful, on-target relationship review in hand by logging into SAM, choosing a customer and tailoring presentation content. With just a few clicks, the process also automatically populates graphs and tables with customer data from other sources.

For marketing organizations seeking to apply a best practice, end-to-end approach, SAVO brings strategic and creative expertise to the table, garnered through its years of trail-blazing relationship review work in collaboration with Fortune 500 organizations.

Key steps in the SAVO process include planning, content development, training, rollout, production and refinement.

"Our vision was to have our more than 300 account managers deliver about 500 Quarterly Business Reviews to customers-more than 180,000 presentations annually," said Marlyn Cascarina, vice president of sales operations at AmerisourceBergen. "With our old process, it could take hours of administrative support and account manager time to get just one presentation deck ready, making our vision seem out of reach-until we found SAVO and SAM.

Now we have a best-in-class presentation and one online place to access. We can customize customer data in no time, saving us hundreds of thousands of hours that we can put back into relationship development."

SAM is a new breed of hosted application that signals a departure from traditional CRM. "CRM contains the word 'relationship' but ironically these systems put far more emphasis on keeping track of customer contacts than on growing customer relationships-maximizing the effectiveness of the contact time itself," said Sheryl Kingstone, Yankee Group program manager, CRM strategies.

"Now more than ever, businesses need a platform that helps drive more revenue through marketing and sales effectiveness."

Source: Verticalnet